by Nan Ryan
Clay worked hard and studied hard. Along with celestial navigation, seamanship, ballistics, and cannonry, he became proficient in Greek, Latin, botany, geology, zoology, philosophy, and the great literatures.
A natural athlete, he quickly learned such things as precision drill, immediate obedience to proper commands, and the ability to perform—and to lead—under pressure.
His few free hours were spent mostly alone, either in his Spartan room at the old stone dormitory or at the academy’s vast nautical library. He rarely joined his boisterous classmates on their treks “landward” into the town of Annapolis. And he took severe teasing because of it.
“What’s wrong with you, Knight?” a fellow midshipman would ask. “Don’t you like women and whiskey?”
“Love ’em both.”
“Well, come on, then. It’s Saturday night and liberty’s already begun. Let’s go buy some wild women a drink.”
“Not this time.”
“Not this time, not this time,” they’d all mimic, chuckling, elbowing each other in the ribs. And one of the bunch would inevitably say, “Know what I think about old Tennessee Knight here? I think he’s afraid. I believe he’s scared to death of women.” Loud laughter and then: “How about it, Knight? You scared? That it?”
Clay would just smile at their taunts and let them have their fun. Then he’d turn back to his books as soon as they left on their adventure, uncaring that there wouldn’t be another liberty call for a month.
Despite his seeming indifference and continued refusal to their offers of companionship, both his roommates and the other midshipmen liked Clay. They respected him for his tenacity and steely determination. They envied and admired him the total lack of concern he showed when bullying upperclassmen attempted to get his goat and make him lose his temper.
But none of his mates understood him.
Clay Knight seemed older than his years. He was never one of the gang. There was an aura of coolness about him that kept everyone at arm’s length. Nobody got close to Clay Knight. He was a true loner with chilly gray eyes and an I-couldn’t-care-less-what-you-think manner.
In the early spring of Clay’s plebe year at the academy, word came that his mother, Anna Knight, had fallen ill with a serious case of influenza. Given a compassionate leave, Clay returned at once to Memphis.
But he was too late.
His hardworking, uncomplaining mother had passed away the night before his arrival. Only a handful of people attended the graveside services. Clay nodded to a few old friends and acquaintances. But he stood alone before the coffin, his hands clasped before him.
He bowed his dark head. His wintry gaze rested on the plain wooden coffin as he listened to the white-haired pastor speak eloquently about the good, kind woman who was his mother.
When the short service ended, he raised his head slowly. And saw, standing directly across the lowered coffin from him, Mary Ellen Preble Lawton on the arm of her husband, Daniel.
Clay’s eyes clashed briefly with Mary Ellen’s.
Hers were a defiant, angry black; his, a cold, uncaring gray.
They didn’t speak.
She turned away quickly. A muscle spasmed in Clay’s tight jaw. His eyes narrowed, and he watched helplessly as Daniel Lawton guided Mary to their waiting carriage. Clay’s heart slammed against his ribs. He wanted to run after Mary, to call out to her that she couldn’t go home with Lawton. She couldn’t; she belonged to him!
Into his mind flashed that cold Sunday afternoon in January when they’d driven out to the deserted gatehouse on the old abandoned estate. They’d lain naked on their coats in a circle of lighted candles and made sweet love. Afterward he’d asked her, “You couldn’t hurt me, could you?”
Never, my darling, never. That was what she had said, and her beautiful dark eyes had shone with what he had believed to be love. Never, my darling, never.
His chest tightened. He swallowed hard. He stood there unmoving until everyone had gone.
Then he plucked the fragrant white carnation from his uniform lapel, stepped forward, and placed it on his mother’s coffin. “Good-bye, Mother,” he said softly, his eyes filled with tears. He blinked them away, raised his dark head, stepped back, looked around, and added, “And good-bye, Memphis.”
He turned and walked away.
Clay went straight to the levee and boarded a river steamer, vowing never to come back home again.
Mary Ellen returned to the huge Lawton mansion with her husband. Longing to be alone, she held her tongue when Daniel followed her up the grand staircase to their suite.
“I thought I’d lie down for a while,” she announced, hoping he would give her an hour of privacy.
“Sounds like a very good idea,” he replied, that telling grin she’d learned to recognize coming to his lips.
They went inside their suite. “Daniel, please…” She tried to keep her voice low, level. “I have a faint headache, and—”
“Yes, and I know what caused your ‘faint headache.’” He took off his dark suit jacket and loosened his gray silk cravat.
Calmly removing her dark brown velvet bonnet, Mary Ellen said, “I have no idea what you mean.”
“Don’t you? Then let me clarify. Clay Knight. Knight’s the source of your headache, isn’t he? You saw him again, and you want—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted. “Don’t be absurd.” She smoothed her hair where the bonnet had ruffled it.
Daniel came to her, took hold of her upper arms. “You’re my wife, Mary Ellen. Mine. You’re to remember that.” He pulled her close. “I know how to make you remember. I know how to get that seamstress’s son out of your head.”
He forcefully drew her up on her toes and kissed her hard. In minutes he had her undressed and in their big four-poster. Mary Ellen closed her eyes when he made the move to climb atop her, but she opened them again as soon as he’d thrust into her.
She focused on the white porcelain clock that sat on the mantel across the room. And she started the countdown. The countdown to the three minutes it would take Daniel to climax. The practice had become a habit, a habit about which she felt guilty.
But then she felt guilty most of the time. Guilty that she had married Daniel Lawton when she didn’t love him. Guilty that she hadn’t learned to love him, hadn’t even grown fond of him. Consumed with guilt, she had tried in the very beginning to be a good wife, to lose herself in his lovemaking. It hadn’t worked. So she had quickly fallen into the practice of counting down to three minutes, when it would mercifully end.
But today Mary Ellen lost count when unbidden came the vivid recollection of a cold February day when she and Clay had slipped down to the summerhouse and he had kissed her for the very first time. She could still feel the smoothness of his lips on hers, the warmth of his breath against her cheek. It was the sweetest, most innocent of kisses, and to this day she could remember exactly how it felt.
After they had kissed several times, Clay said, “Don’t ever kiss anybody else, Mary. I couldn’t stand it if you did. You belong to my heart. No other lips much kiss you but mine, no other arms must hold you but mine.”
“Ahhhhh,” Daniel groaned loudly in his ecstasy.
In the spring of 1852 Clayton Terrell Knight graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis at the very top of his class. He planned to make the military his life-long career just as his maternal grandfather, Admiral Clayton L. Tigart, the commodore, had before him.
Clay promptly volunteered to be sent completely across America to the Western Station. But even at remote frontier ports of call, he managed to attract the attention of his Pacific Fleet superiors. And he managed to attract the attention of the fair sex as well.
At twenty-two Clay was already a strikingly handsome man. The long hours of exercise coupled with his healthy appetite had changed the way he looked. He had been a tall, gangly boy when he’d first arrived at the academy. Upon leaving it, he was a lean, well-built man with wide sculpted shoulders, a drum-tigh
t abdomen, and strong, lightly muscled legs. His face, like his body, had changed in his years at Annapolis. All traces of the youthful openness and childish enthusiasm were gone. His classic boyish features had hardened into those of a slightly cynical, self-assured man.
Clay’s brooding good looks turned heads wherever he went, and he never wanted for female companionship. He was a dark, seductive figure with strangely hypnotic silver-gray eyes that instantly set hearts aflutter. His very presence stirred shameful thoughts and secret longings in the bosoms of respectable women, young and old.
A sensual man by nature, Ensign Clay Knight was perfectly willing to enjoy the feminine charms so unselfishly offered to him. At every officers’ dance or outside social event, Clay had a beautiful woman on his arm. The woman understood, in advance, that she would also share his bed later in the evening.
Didn’t tradition say, “Forces ashore must treat forces afloat”?
Through an ever-changing parade of beautiful women, Clay remained unreachable. He never promised love or commitment, never pretended an emotion he didn’t feel. He had become a cold, aloof man whose heart was permanently scarred. To Clay Knight, women were a mere convenience, a troublesome necessity, a series of warm, willing bodies to help him make it through the long, lonely nights.
Knowing all this, the women still made themselves readily available. His heart was cold, but his body was hot, and he knew how to use it. His dark animal beauty instantly aroused their sexual hunger. And he had learned, through the passing of the years and the passing parade of women, any number of techniques to give a voracious lover the ultimate in sexual pleasure.
So when a woman was in his arms, when he was skillfully, if dispassionately, making love to her as no other man ever had, the grateful woman forgot that he would never really be hers. He was hers for now, and she gladly immersed herself in the exquisite joy he gave her.
Still, despite his complete honesty before taking them to bed, many of the dazzled women fell madly in love with Clay. It was to their sorrow. His love—and his hatred—for Mary Ellen Preble Lawton never cooled, never diminished, never let him go.
It was much the same with Mary Ellen.
She was the envied wife of one of the richest, most handsome gentlemen in the entire Southland, but never a single day went by that she didn’t think about Clay Knight. She never stopped hating him. She blamed him for her all her unhappiness. Her empty, loveless marriage was his fault. Had she not been so totally devastated by his cruel, sudden jilting, she would never have married Daniel.
Regretting her rash, foolish actions ever since, Mary Ellen remembered how hurt and confused she had been at the time. And how she’d been pushed from all sides into the relationship with Daniel. How she had finally given in one balmy night in Monte Carlo and said yes. She’d been so tired of fighting everyone, especially her father. As soon as he had joined them on the Riviera, her father had begun insisting she come to her senses and marry Daniel. Finally she had given in.
Now she existed in a state of perennial apathy. Her days were spent in resignation and regret in the lavish upstairs suite of rooms she’d come to think of as her silk-walled prison. Her nights were spent in the prison’s four-poster with a man whose touch neither excited nor repelled her. It did nothing to her, one way or the other.
Night after night Mary Ellen lay lifeless beneath the amorous Daniel, sadly remembering the thrilling touch of the heartless man she hated, loved, couldn’t live without. Totally unaware of what was going through her mind, Daniel never failed to attain a deep, seemingly satisfying climax.
But for her it never happened.
Her body—and her heart—were permanently anesthetized.
16
BEFORE THEY CELEBRATED THEIR second anniversary, Daniel Lawton had begun staying out late many evenings. Mary Ellen was not surprised, nor did she blame him. She hadn’t been the adoring wife, had never shown him the love and affection that were his due. If their marriage was less than perfect—which it certainly was—she was the one responsible.
Daniel made up elaborate stories, explaining that it was absolutely necessary that he stay out till all hours. It was business. She knew better. It was monkey business. Daniel wasn’t a very convincing liar. She knew exactly where he had been.
Everyone in Memphis was aware of Antole’s, the fancy sporting house that catered to the city’s moneyed patricians. Years ago she had heard house servants whisper that many of the city’s most illustrious citizens, including Daniel’s distinguished white-haired father, had on occasion been a patron. Apparently Daniel had now joined the ranks of his father and those other aristocratic gentlemen who spent evenings at the famed brothel.
She suspected that he’d also resumed an intimate relationship with his former lover, Brandy Templeton Fowler. Brandy was a newlywed herself, but her marriage to a wealthy middle-aged real estate magnate from New Orleans hadn’t changed her. And she’d always had a weakness for Daniel.
More than one midnight Mary Ellen was awakened by the late arrival of her husband, the scent of perfume that wasn’t her fragrance clinging to his fine clothes. And occasionally when he got undressed she saw scratch marks on his back.
Mary Ellen never confronted him. She never asked him where he had been. She never complained that he was neglecting her. She never so much as hinted that she thought he was being unfaithful to her.
She didn’t particularly care. Truth to tell, she welcomed his absence at bedtime. It was a relief to be left alone. She was more than willing to allow Brandy or some high-paid fancy lady to stand in for her. Or lie in for her, she thought with wicked satisfaction.
Secretly, shamefully, Mary Ellen was glad Daniel was expending some of his sexual energy away from home. Away from her. She was equally glad that Daniel at least had the decency not to touch her on the nights when he had been with another woman.
Evenings when he stayed at home, Mary Ellen continued dutifully to share his bed without complaint because Daniel desperately wanted a son. She hadn’t given him anything else. Surely she could give him a son who would love him as she did not.
But months, then years, passed and Mary Ellen did not conceive.
“It’s your fault,” Daniel accused her one morning when he learned that once again Mary Ellen was not pregnant. “There must be something wrong with you or you’d have conceived a long time ago.”
Mary Ellen calmly sat down at her dressing table and began to brush her hair. “I’m sorry, Daniel. Truly I am.”
“Well, so am I.” He paced back and forth behind her. “Dammit all, a wife’s supposed to give her husband children. All our friends are talking about us. They’re saying I can’t father a child.”
“That’s your imagination,” she told him evenly. “Our friends wouldn’t be so unkind.”
“Well, maybe they’re not saying it, but they’re thinking it.”
“Perhaps they are right,” Mary Ellen said. “You’ve insisted I see the doctor, which I have done repeatedly. He says there is nothing wrong, no reason why I shouldn’t get pregnant. Have you considered the fact that it might be you who—”
“I?” he interrupted, incredulous. He stopped his pacing and came to stand directly behind her. “My dear,” he said arrogantly, crossing his arms over his chest and meeting her eyes in the mirror, “let me assure you that I am more than capable of producing an heir.” He began to smile then. A slow, sly grin spread over his smug face, and Mary Ellen strongly suspected he had living proof of that boast.
She said nothing, just nodded and continued to brush her hair.
“It’s all right,” he told her finally, his arms coming uncrossed. “We’ll just have to try harder. We’ll make love more often.” He gave her shoulders a squeeze, turned, and crossed the room. At the door he paused and said, “If it is possible for you to conceive, I will make you pregnant.”
Daniel tried.
So did Mary Ellen.
But after a half dozen years of an empty, loveless mar
riage, the couple still remained childless. Daniel finally gave up on Mary Ellen making him a father. In his frustration and disappointment he accused her of not wanting his child.
“You think you’re so very clever, my dear, but I’m not fooled,” he said one winter evening when he’d had too much brandy. “You don’t really want a child. You don’t want my child. You never did.”
“That isn’t true, Daniel. I have done everything I can to give you a child.”
“I don’t believe you. Not for a minute,” he said, slurring his words. “You want to know what I really think? I think that all these years you’ve been practicing some secret effective procedure to keep from conceiving.”
“We’ve been over this before,” Mary Ellen said wearily. “I’ve told you, I know of no secret method. You must believe me.”
But no amount of denying such an absurdity convinced Daniel. He was sure there could be no other explanation.
The failing marriage finally came to an end in the early summer of 1857. On a warm sunny day in late May, Daniel returned from a week-long business trip down to Mobile. It was the third time he had been to Alabama in the past three months.
Daniel found Mary Ellen alone in the rose garden at the south side of the Lawton mansion. Curled up on a settee of white wrought-iron lace, she was so engrossed in her book by Jane Austen, she was unaware of his presence. So he stood for a long moment and observed her quietly.
Her white-blond hair was dressed atop her bent head, exposing the graceful curve of her neck. The summer dress she wore was a pale shade of pink organza, the exact hue of the delicate roses covering the tall bush directly behind her. Her full skirts and lacy petticoats spilled down onto the manicured grass at her slippered feet.
One side of the dress’s low bodice had fallen down to reveal her pale bare shoulder. Her skin looked like fine porcelain, and when she breathed the swell of her breasts strained against the fallen bodice.
